Little more then an extended biographical essay which documents books which Keegan "has found an indispensable guide to the war's drama and tragedy." It is none the less an interesting collection. I'm sure everyone who reads it will find room for disagreement with the books listed. I disagree with Keegan's inclusion of Ambrose's Eisenhower biography, however that's based in recent revelations regarding Ambrose's plagiarism and the possibility that he did not conduct all the interviews with Ike that he claimed to have, things Keegan would not have known when this book was published in 1995. Two other more bizarre inclusions are David Irving's Hitler's War and Goring. Keegan describes Irving as as championing extreme right-wing politics and having offered a reward to anyone producing written evidence of Hitler authorizing the final solution, he also describes him as a historian of formidable powers. Perhaps in 1995 Irving's travels to the lunacy of holocaust denial was not yet complete and Keegan's description of him was accurate at the time and perhaps, at one time Irving was a good historian but I think his recent activities have discredited his previous work.

A short book and worth reading, however it assumes the reader has some familiarity with the Second World War.

This book contains what may be the single most depressing thing I've read recently:

"By now, fifty years after 1945, I have read very extensively indeed. There are few aspects of the war about which I do not know something, and several about which I know a great deal. Nevertheless, it is the limitation rather than the scope of my knowledge of which I am most aware."

What hope is there for the rest of us? ( )

An excellent resource for any WW2 buff. An updated second edition would continue to move us toward Keegan's 100 year benchmark for definitive histories. ( )

One-stop shopping for pointers to the the best historical writing on WWII.

The title of this book--unfortunate and deeply misleading--suggests that Keegan will review the controversies that continue to rage among historians (professional and amateur) decades after the end of the war: Was Churchill a great leader? Did Roosevelt know of the attack on Pearl Harbor before it happened? Were the atomic bombs necessary? Could the US have reduced the carnage of the Holocaust? Instead, Keegan offers something more pedestrian but (perhaps) more useful: A book-length bibliographic essay on the best historical writing on the war. His reach is enormous and (from where I stand) his judgements are sound. This is clearly a book for those with a serious interest in the war or some aspect of it, but anyone in that category will find it enormously useful. ( )